Who wants a MAMA when you can win the Grammy?

Nneka. Photo Credit:Nairaland

Who wants a MAMA when you can win the Grammy?

I read Lolade Sowoolu’s "Between Sasha and Nneka" in the Showtime magazine of the Saturday Vanguard on December 18, 2010, and it was quite an interesting critical analysis of how and why the Nigerian rap diva Sasha beat the more internationally acclaimed Nneka to win the Best Female Artiste award at the last MTV Africa Music Awards (MAMA) in Lagos, Nigeria, making Sasha the first Nigerian to win in the Best Female category after Kenyans dominated it in the last two years. Sowoolu reported that many people thought Nneka should have won the award, because she is considered a more internationally accepted Nigerian artiste as Asa .



Sasha

Asa

Nneka the Nigerian-German hip hop/soul singer and guitarist is a popular artiste internationally, but not locally, because presently majority of her fellow Nigerians and the rest of Africans do not appreciate her kind of music which is more of a revolutionary fusion of modern reggae and hip-hop and her unique style has taken her places from Europe to the US and then to Africa and she won the award for Best African Act at the 2009 MOBO Awards. And Nneka was on the Late Show with David Letterman in New York before her first concert tour of the United States publicized as the Concrete Jungle and she performed shows in New York City, Vienna (Washington DC), Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco. And she made the coveted hot list of Rolling Stone and no other Nigerian female artiste has made it and for what Nneka has achieved so far, she is ahead of Asa and Sasha in the world of music. And her ambition is above the MAMA. She is looking forward to winning the Grammy like Sade Adu has done and even a dummy knows that the Grammy is a more globally acclaimed recognition in music than MAMA, MOBO or Channel O.

~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima

MAMA 2010 WINNERS IN FULL

Best Anglophone - Daddy Owen (Kenya)
Best Francophone - Fally Ipupa (DRC)
Best Lusophone - Cabo Snoop (Angola)
Artist of the Year- 2Face (Nigeria)
Best Female - Sasha (Nigeria)
Best Male - 2Face (Nigeria)
Best Video - Fally Ipupa (DRC): “Sexy Dance”
Best Group – P-Square (Nigeria)
Brand New Act - Mo Cheddah (Nigeria)
Best Performance - Big Nuz (South Africa)
Song of the Year - Liquideep (South Africa): “Fairytale”
MAMA Legend – Miriam Makeba (South Africa)
Best International – Eminem (USA).

Nneka’s Concrete Jungle Tour in the USA

Nneka is 2010’s First Breakout Artist to perform on “The Late Show with David Letterman” on February 3rd.

“…righteously bold and heartbreakingly fragile.”-SPIN, 10 To Watch in 2010

“Nneka…is pure hotness.”-Rolling Stone

Nneka had a successful US tour from January 27th to Valentine’s Day. It was called the Concrete Jungle Tour and launched her stateside debut album that was released on February 2nd.The tour took her to 14 cities across the US, including New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles.
Nneka made her US late night television debut on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” on February 3rd.

Rolling Stone selected her as an Artist to Watch in 2010, and her video for “The Uncomfortable Truth” has been getting regular spins on both BET and MTV.

Shot throughout the course of her recent November 2009 visit to the US, the Who Is Nneka? video is an intimate look at the artist. See it HERE.

“My main message is to wake people up,” Nneka said. “To make them feel themselves; to make them feel their spirit; to be in touch with their innermost.”
From the critical acclaim of her recent collaborative mixtape The Madness (Onye-Ala) with DJ and producer extraordinaire J.Period to her sold-out performances with The Roots in NYC, Nneka’s certainly only just getting started.

“There’s so much that I, myself, have to learn in my life…and there’s still much that I do not know. At the same time I’m sharing my music with people, [I’m] learning from that sharing.”

For more information or to interview Nneka, give us a ring!

Pam Nashel Leto (212) 989-2222 x 111 pam@Girlie.com

Kabeer Malhotra (212) 989-2222 x 123 kabeer@Girlie.com

Vickie Starr (212) 989-2222, x101 vickie@girlie.com

Alexandra Dunne (212) 833-5429 alexandra.dunne@sonymusic.com
www.myspace.com/nnekaworld

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